The idea sounded like a hoax when it appeared on the newswire Tuesday. San Diego State football plans to join the Big East. The story had an Associated Press byline, but clearly the editorial staff of the Onion had hacked into the AP computer to plant this item.

Conference-hopping and shopping has become so pervasive and perverse, the news probably shouldn't have seemed comical. San Diego in the Big East? Sure, why not? Is Hawaii available? Does the University of Tokyo have football?

If this shift happens, the NCAA needs to do one of two things: Ban all regional references in conference titles, or create remedial geography courses for all college athletes. They can take the class by video on their plane rides to games, which may become the only way the student-athletes find time to learn anything.

Most professional players, assigned to study only game film, won't have to travel much farther in a season than San Diego State ultimately will.

The 49ers' schedule this season was considered extremely demanding, because they had to fly into the Eastern time zone five times - to Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington and Baltimore. Oops, wait, they flew cross-country only four times because they camped out in Ohio between the Bengals and Eagles games.

In between, they trained at Youngstown State, which is a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, even though the Missouri River runs much closer to Saskatchewan than it does to Ohio.

The funny thing is that pro sports cleaned up their most geographically incorrect alignments a while ago. How many impressionable minds were warped by Atlanta's presence in western divisions for baseball and football, and by the then-Phoenix Cardinals playing in the NFC East? I knew better, but I could never entirely shake the belief that Peachtree Street and the Grand Canyon were a day trip apart.

It's silly, but it might qualify me to become a college conference commissioner.